University Hospital Plymouth NHS trust has been shortlisted in the top three projects for Best Global Healthcare Implementation award at the RFID Journals annual awards. The RFID system which was implemented during the pandemic tags 25,000 medical devices and tracks 3,500 assets each day, once fully implemented the system will track upto 50,000 assets in the hospital.
The Hospital trust selected RFID Discovery for the implementation of the asset tracking system, which aims to improve asset utilisation, reduce time spend locating assets through the many ward moves and improve patient safety inline with the NHS Scan4Safety scheme. In addition the system will help manage thousands of new critical care devices, purchased during the pandemic, making infection control easier.
“Our RFID infrastructure is being implemented to provide a variety of benefits to the Trust and has been designed to provide excellent return on investment, whilst being future-proofed for future expansion and development. The team involved in implementing this project are extremely proud of the recognition this system has already achieved – and the benefits achieved to date – but this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what this system will be able to provide once fully set up and utilised.”
Alex Peters, UHP’s Medical Device Asset Register Developer
The system has meant that the hospital was able to better care for patients through the pandemic, providing management teams with the data they needed to improve workload reporting and planning. It is estimated by the trust that the RFID project has potential cost savings of an incredible £4m per year.
This money saving comes in various forms, faster audits which take 90-95% less time to complete, 50% reduction in time for both clinical and technical staff spend locating items, and a deducting in the costs of hiring replacement items due to better management controls.
“We are delighted to be working with the Scan4Safety team at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust to implement a track and trace solution of this scale across the areas of Clinical Engineering and Sterile Services to help the Trust improve efficiency as well as patient safety.”
Simon Dawkins, Senior RFID Consultant at RFiD Discovery
Once fully implemented the system will have a total of 62 fixed readers, 12 mobile readers and between 50,000 and 60,000 UHF RFID tags. Over the coming months the Clinical Engineering & Sterilisation ad disinfection unit at the hospital will replace existing asset labels on medical devices and surgical trays with UHF RFID tags, each asset recorded into the systems database.
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